I have been getting ready to start loading for the up-coming season and saw in the lyman book that they stated the the Winchester hs, compression formed, and the polyformed cases with plastic basewads are all interchangeable. Is this true? I have read through all the threads I could find on reloading 2 3/4 xpert shells and found a couple modified recipes using other load data but haven't found one that sounded safe. A guy mentioned using rsi #65 with the xpert 2 3/4 hulls even though it calls for a fed gold metal, anybody use that? I know for the most part that the xpert hulls are junk but I have about 500 of them a buddy gave me and I would like to use them if I can get a recipe from someone that has loaded them. If lyman is correct and the Winchester shells are interchangeable then finding a low pressure load isn't to difficult. Any info would be great. Thanks

Waterfowl hunting is not just a sport, Its an addiction to some of us.

Winchester hulls are not very popular for reloading. The reason for this is their crimps. They are factory crimped with a heat sealed crimp. The centers of the crimp blows away on ignition. When you go to reloading them, there is a big hole in the middle where the factory crimp used to be but was blown away, leaving a big hole in the middle. To get around this, I have used a hot glue gun to seal the reloaded crimps and close that big hole. Not ideal by any means but it will get you by. Now, I have started trimming these fired Win hulls, cut off most of the old folded crimp and do a rto crimp on them. This works best imo. I do all this only on 10ga Win hulls as 10ga hulls are so hard to come by and expensive. For 12ga, I dont fool around with the Win hulls. Other good hulls are easy to come by in 12ga.

Don't even bother with the winchester hulls unless they are AA or heavy game loads. The universal and xperts are total trash. Yeah, there are guys that reload them. There are also lots of reports of them separating and busting gun barrels when shooting clays. If you have 5-6 guys firing off shots at once how are you going to hear if one bloopers and gets stuck in your gun? not worth it!

I've been there... when I started reloading I had thousands of xperts and universals. Guys told me not to use them, I did anyways. I used AA recipes and they went bang. Crimps were terrible, they were very difficult to load, I was thinking every time I pulled up on a bird or clay "listen to see if its a dud", caused me to miss MANY MANY doves and clays.

Another thing, the xperts/universals are a tad bit wider and thinner walled than an AA or polyform so powder WILL bypass the gas seal and get alongside your wad. This will cause inconsistent firings, especially if they are in your blind bag being tossed around.

Just toss them. Its not worth the trouble. Buy some once fired hulls if you need to, they are cheap. Just about every reloading shop sells them, including the online ones. If you can't find what you want there, then post a want-add here. Lots of waterfowlers, especially 10ga shooters keep their hulls to sell as once fired.

agree 2x.i pick them up off the ground mostly to get rid of them.left from other hunters.for years I have put my time in trying to reload steel with them.iam done.base wads are different color not the same height wad gets stuck trying to get it past the brass.then you get it figured out and got a hole in the middle.glue wax sucks.they do make a nice 1 1/16 load easy on the shoulder.AA hulls are better but not by much unless your loading for skeet or trap.federal gold medal are good cheditte hulls any thing but winnie's.

It realy sucks but I kind of figured that would be the result. It was kind of a shot in the dark after reading 4 pages of threads with '2 3/4 xpert hulls' as the search. I have very little money for hunting because of kids and 5 hunters in the house so I was trying to save money wherever I could. I have tried using my sts hulls and I didn't care for the loads I got out of them. my go to load actualy is with the federal paper base wad shells. we seem to do 'ok' with them over the factory xpert loads. I wish I could match that load, for some reason I slay ducks with it out of my 870. Probably the best shooting load for me. That's probably why I pick them up. Thanks though guys if you have a load as deadly as the 1550fps #2 2 3/4 xpert loads that I can load it would be great but I will probable start picking them up just so I don't leave them in the water.

Waterfowl hunting is not just a sport, Its an addiction to some of us.

I have used the Win AA old style that work great but stopped when they went to the 2 pc hull with the plastic base section in the bottom of the hull. I do not pick up the hulls with the silver "Tin" base.......just the good ones that have a brass base.Using Federal data for a winchester hull is not a good thing either............two different style hulls thatuse different size wads. Why would you put a straight wall wad into a tapered hull?

If you have the good brass hulls, load them but with the correct data, even though the maximum SAFE loadis only 1 oz. of steel with a Sam 1 wad or its clone.